


The only thing to do

by dani_the_girl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dani_the_girl/pseuds/dani_the_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes John six months to realise what happened.  It takes a lot longer to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The only thing to do

It takes six months for John to figure out what happened. He's so furious when it finally comes to him that he nearly throws Sherlock's violin case across the room. Nearly. He can't quite bring himself to. Instead, he throws out all of Sherlocks old clothes, sells the violin and the skull on eBay, takes Sherlock's name off the lease. On the outside, it looks like acceptance but he knows that Sherlock will see it for what it really is. Rejection.

He stays angry for a very long time. He thinks about moving out, but he worries about Mrs Hudson, left on her own, and the flat's convenient for getting to his practice so he stays. Plus he knows it will annoy Sherlock that his old home is now so clean, tidy, respectable even. He deliberately leaves the curtains open when he brings the occasional date home, sits on the sofa with a glass of wine with them, rolls in the sheets. I've moved on, he thinks, savagely, as he waves them politely off. Metaphorically, if not literally.

It takes another eighteen months for John to finally forgive Sherlock. It comes on gradually, little things. He stops bringing people over, except the occasional mate for a cup of tea. He finds a box of patches down the back of the sofa and doesn't throw them away, just tucks them into the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He replies to Lestrade's texts, meets him in the pub for a drink and a chat.

Even so, he doesn't really realise that it's happened until he comes home from work one evening to find Sherlock sitting in his usual chair, deceptively relaxed. Sherlock wouldn't have come back, John thinks wildly through his shock, if he wasn't sure, if he didn't know that he would be received. Sherlock barely looks at him, flicks a glance up and then turns back to his fingers, steepled in front of him, elbows propped on the arm of the chair.

"Aren't you going to welcome me home?" Sherlock asks evenly, after what John presumes is an interval carefully judged to be just shorter than the amount of time it would take him to get over the shock and start to bawl Sherlock out.

"No," John bites out. Even though he can feel it, realises that he has forgiven Sherlock for what happened, seeing him again makes an echo of the fury he felt eighteen months ago well up inside him, only made worse by the more distant echo of two years ago. "Is it safe for you to be here?"

"Oh yes," Sherlock brushes the consideration away idly with a flip of the hand. "People stopped watching you months ago. I would have thought that was obvious."

You didn't, thinks John, savagely. "Not all of us have your perception," he says aloud. "Does Mrs Hudson know you're here?" He doesn't think Mrs Hudson has ever realised what really happened at the hospital and it occurs to him that he's not at all sure the old lady's heart is up to finding out.

"Mycroft explained things to her," Sherlock says absently. When he doesn't seem inclined to say anything else, John makes himself move. It seems stupid to stand in the doorway all night, so he walks properly into the room, puts his briefcase down on the table and makes himself a cup of tea, mechanically. He deliberately doesn't make one for Sherlock. He sits down in the chair opposite Sherlock and waits, quietly sipping the tea. If Sherlock is ready to apologise, John's not going to make it easy for him.

When he realises, it stirs the anger and bitterness and grief up until they well up to blot out any other emotion. Sherlock is not waiting to apologise. Sherlock isn't sorry. He would do the same thing again in the same situation and defend it as the only possible way out. Suddenly, John can't bear to be here anymore. He spent six months blaming himself, ripping himself apart inside and then another year and more so furiously angry that he thought he would explode and Sherlock doesn't care. "I'm going out," he says, quietly, hoping futilely that Sherlock at least won't realise how fucked up he is right now.

Sherlock doesn't look up. "See you at 8:30," he says, just as if nothing had ever happened.

John grabs his jacket and lets the door swing shut behind him. It's cold outside and he doesn't really look where he's going. Tries and fails not to think about standing beside Sherlock's grave in the rain, about watching the wind pull and flap at his coat as it fell off the roof. Perhaps if he doesn't know where he's going, Sherlock won't either.

Fat chance of that, he thinks bitterly when he realises where his subconcious has taken him. Around the next corner is the house where Jennifer Wilson died, where he first saw Sherlock at work, got caught in his wake. Deliberately, he doesn't turn, carries on down the road and takes the next road back towards the flat. He almost expects the phone to ring in the phone box as he passes, but nothing happens. People pass him by without a glance as he makes his way, just as Sherlock had promised.

He pauses as he gets close to the flat, not ready to go back upstairs yet, not sure what else to do. Eventually, he walks on past, goes to the Chinese place he gets most of his takeaway from and orders for the two of them. On the walk back, his seesawing feelings have settled into a sort of blankness. He still doesn't know what to do or how to feel about Sherlock's reappearance, but he at least feels ready to find out.

Sherlock's head jerks up when John pushes open the door again and John is surprised to realise that he looks tense, almost distressed. "You're late," he says sharply and John looks over at the clock, realising to his surprise that it's after nine.

"Stopped for this," he says, holding up the back of takeaway cartons as explanation. 

It's been so long that John almost misses the momentary confusion on Sherlock's face, suddenly cleared away as he decides what the offer of food means and clearly he likes the deduction because he relaxes back into the chair again and says expansively "Excellent idea. I'll have mine in my usual bowl if you haven't thrown it away."

"You know I haven't," John points out from the kitchen.

"You threw away the violin," Sherlock's voice calls through to him. "And all of my experiments. And my skull."

"The experiments would be ruined by now anyway," John replies. He picks up the two bowls, cutlery and two bottles of beer from the fridge and carries it all back to the living room. "And I didn't throw away the violin or the skull."

"Sold to Mycroft," Sherlock says with disdain. "Comes to much the same thing."

"You could have come back for them," John points out evenly.

"That would have defeated the object," Sherlock replies. He picks up his bowl and fork and takes a mouthful of noodles and it takes a second for John to realise that he's avoiding John's eyes. They finish their meal in silence and as soon as he's put down his bowl, Sherlock gets up and starts to wander restlessly around the room, poking at things which have been moved or added, eventually coming to rest by the window, looking down at the street below. "I missed being here," he says softly, still looking down, face in shadow. There is a long pause. "I missed you."

John simply doesn't know what he can say. Once he would have said "Good," and been fiercly, angrily satisfied to have caused Sherlock anything like distress. "I missed you too" seems insanely banal, has no relation to the yawning gulf of grief he had felt at Sherlock's absence but he doesn't know how he can possibly communicate that to Sherlock, whose only contact with such emotions seems purely academic. He settles on "Oh," and waits for Sherlock to continue.

Sherlock doesn't, just stares down at the streetlights and passers by. John finds himself thinking what an odd admission it was, how awkward. He wishes Sherlock would just get on with it, move himself back in, sweep regally onward and sweep John back into his shadow. He doesn't know how to deal with this Sherlock, who is awkward and silent and almost unsure.

Sherlock's shoulders are set and tense and as he watches, John suddenly realises that Sherlock does care. He is waiting for John's permission, for John to choose this, before he asks John to risk going through it all again. Sherlock would do the same thing if the same situation arose, because it was the only thing there was to be done, but he's not blind to the consequences, to the costs and suddenly John wonders, as he hasn't in the whole eighteen months since he realised, how it had felt to Sherlock to watch and not be able to say or do anything. To wait until John had made some kind of peace with it. Even now, he thinks, looking at the bowed head, Sherlock isn't really sure. He knows that John won't throw him out of the door, but he doesn't really believe that John has forgiven him. Perhaps he doesn't believe he deserves it.

"Your room's still empty," he offers and watches Sherlock relax, message received.

"Thank you," Sherlock replies. He turns back into the room with a smile and throws himself down on the sofa, legs stretched out. "Just text Mycroft for me and have him send over my things."


End file.
